It’s Harry Potter Week and we’re celebrating this magical wizard all week long! Come back each day for more magical stuff!

Greetings muggles and wizards! Onward we go with Harry Potter week…I hope you’re all having fun here so far!

Today we’re going to go behind the covers and between the pages to unveil 20 Magical Facts about the Harry Potter book series. Besides being one of the most successful book series of all time, the Harry Potter collection also holds many other awards and acknowledgements.

What other fun facts do you know about Harry Potter? Share in the comments below!

20 Magical Facts About the Harry Potter Series

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in 1998, the same year the final Battle of Hogwarts was fought. Says Rowling, “I open at the close.”
Because a Patronus is a physical representation of one’s soul, James Potter’s stag and Lily Potter’s doe makes them literal soul mates. However, because of his eternal love for Lily, Snape’s Patronus is also a doe.
Rowling has said that if Voldemort saw a boggart, it would take the shape of his own corpse, since his greatest fear is death.
After the horcrux in Harry was destroyed, he lost the ability to speak Parseltongue.
Hoping to go to Hogwarts soon? No can do, USA citizens. Hogwarts only accepts wizards from Britain and Ireland.
Natalie McDonald, who appears in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was a real person. She was a nine-year-old girl from Canada who was dying of leukemia. She wrote to Rowling, asking what was going to happen in the next Harry Potter book since she wouldn’t be alive to read it. Rowling emailed back, but she was a day too late. In honor of her loyal fan, Rowling added her to the series and sorted her into Gryffindor, the house for the brave at heart.
Albus Dumbledore was homosexual and harbored romantic feelings towards Grindelwald.
J.K. Rowling actually wrote the final chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows seven years before the release of the first book.

The Harry Potter books have been translated into more than 70 languages.
The Harry Potter books were the most banned books of the century in the US.
During the first 24 hours of its release, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 11 million copies.
The whole Harry Potter series contains 199 chapters, 4,224 pages, and 1,090,739 words.
Famed novelist Stephen King has said that Dolores Umbridge is “…the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter.”

There are only 500 first-edition copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; by contrast, there are 12 million first-edition copies of the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the highest initial print run in history.

The Harry Potter series is the biggest-selling book series of all time. As of 2011, it has sold more than 450 million copies.

J.K. Rowling has said that “The Mirror of Erised” is one of her favorite chapters from the entire series. Her other favorite is “The Forest Again” from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Both chapters involve Harry interacting with his parents.

In the Harry Potter universe, a gold Galleon is worth about $7.35, a silver Sickle is worth around $0.46, and a bronze Knut is worth about $0.02.

Using that math, the wand Harry buys in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone cost him about $51.45…just about what you would pay to buy one at Harry Potter World.

Drawing the cover art for the British edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone was illustrator Tomas Taylor’s first professional commission.

The word “muggle”, meaning non-magic person, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003.

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